Radiation Therapists
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. California pays radiation therapists best, at $166,450. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $100,947 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for radiation therapists is also the real leader: California at $166,450, holding through tax and through price deflation to $100,947. Both adjustments leave the ordering at the top intact, which indicates a wage premium large enough to dominate the state's tax burden and price level rather than merely offset them.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$105,310
People doing it
17,070
Highest paid
$166,450
CA
Best off, really
$100,947
CA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$80,560
Highest tenth
$156,710
Lowest, really
$63,276
WV
States with data
46
National average
$114,990
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
112.58%
CA, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Where you do this job matters enormously. The best state pays roughly twice what the worst does. Prices alone cannot explain a gap that size. Level everything out and the range still runs $63,276 to $100,947.
- Just 17,070 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- This job is not published everywhere — 46 jurisdictions have a figure, with $105,310 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. California tops the ones that are.
- Geographic dispersion in radiation therapists is unusually wide: the top state's median is approximately double the bottom's, a spread that price differentials cannot account for. The real-terms range, after tax and price deflation, still runs $63,276 to $100,947 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 17,070 are employed nationally in radiation therapists — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- 46 jurisdictions carry a published median for radiation therapists. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Radiation Therapists
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $80,560 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $105,310 |
| Top tenth earn over | $156,710 |
| This salary | $105,310 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Radiation Therapists
The national median for this job
$105,310around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $80,560 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $105,310 |
| Top tenth | $156,710 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Radiation Therapists, state by state
The national median for this job
46states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $71,590 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $166,450 |
| Spread | $94,860 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $105,770 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $108,845 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| CA | $166,450 | $113,647 | $100,947 |
| IL | $124,600 | $90,407 | $91,454 |
| WA | $125,880 | $97,305 | $89,631 |
| KS | $108,830 | $79,608 | $88,487 |
| SD | $97,470 | $77,400 | $87,860 |
| MT | $105,400 | $78,385 | $86,859 |
| NY | $129,620 | $93,004 | $86,414 |
| OR | $131,600 | $90,205 | $86,139 |
| NJ | $129,460 | $93,695 | $86,051 |
| TX | $105,770 | $83,239 | $85,659 |
| UT | $107,660 | $79,778 | $83,975 |
| OK | $98,390 | $74,120 | $83,955 |
| NM | $100,010 | $75,617 | $83,661 |
| OH | $98,650 | $76,234 | $83,032 |
| LA | $94,710 | $73,003 | $82,634 |
| NE | $98,670 | $74,458 | $82,387 |
| KY | $97,760 | $74,300 | $82,129 |
| AZ | $108,760 | $83,026 | $82,119 |
| MO | $99,890 | $75,345 | $82,109 |
| HI | $125,520 | $88,963 | $81,911 |
| CT | $116,170 | $84,835 | $81,817 |
| ID | $99,660 | $74,512 | $81,501 |
| SC | $100,790 | $75,451 | $80,976 |
| IN | $96,690 | $74,029 | $80,305 |
| NC | $99,250 | $75,201 | $79,883 |
| CO | $108,020 | $80,778 | $79,676 |
| NH | $106,270 | $83,591 | $79,350 |
| PA | $100,540 | $76,473 | $78,434 |
| VT | $101,060 | $75,366 | $77,991 |
| MS | $88,100 | $67,376 | $77,185 |
| ME | $101,980 | $74,924 | $77,164 |
| FL | $100,920 | $79,827 | $77,164 |
| MI | $95,890 | $72,464 | $76,939 |
| NV | $92,990 | $74,248 | $76,561 |
| MD | $107,120 | $79,383 | $76,355 |
| WI | $93,600 | $70,576 | $75,809 |
| VA | $103,310 | $76,329 | $75,761 |
| AL | $87,330 | $66,584 | $74,007 |
| MN | $98,000 | $72,632 | $73,801 |
| GA | $94,460 | $71,168 | $73,597 |
| TN | $83,520 | $67,586 | $73,054 |
| MA | $106,300 | $78,617 | $72,634 |
| IA | $81,610 | $63,753 | $71,821 |
| AR | $78,950 | $61,909 | $71,564 |
| DC | $100,250 | $73,803 | $66,607 |
| WV | $71,590 | $56,804 | $63,276 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for radiation therapists as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $105,310, which means half of everyone doing this work earns less than that. Where you land depends on how long you have done it, who you do it for, and which city you do it in.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for radiation therapists, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is California, at $113,647.
- Levelling out prices for radiation therapists is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — West Virginia sits at the bottom on $63,276.
- These are distribution medians for radiation therapists, with a national value of $105,310. They describe a midpoint rather than an expected offer, and the within-occupation spread — visible in the tenth and ninetieth percentile figures — is wide enough that a state-level median is a weak predictor for any individual worker.
- Retained-pay figures for radiation therapists model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $113,647, which leads in California.
- The price deflation applied to radiation therapists uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is West Virginia at $63,276. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — West Virginia anchors the bottom at $63,276 — and the two source series are dated independently.